Posts Tagged ‘food safety’

While most restaurants do not require their employees to be certified food allergen experts, the right knowledge and training for your restaurant’s employees can make a crucial difference in reducing your liability. National Food Safety Month may be over, but safe food handling where it concerns food allergies is a year-round must. Ingredients that are commonly seen in almost every restaurant’s menu – milk, fish, wheat, nuts, shellfish, eggs – can have some uncommonly devastating effects on patrons with certain food allergies. It is estimated that over 15 million Americans are allergic to some of the most common kitchen ingredients, which could very well threaten their lives and your business in an emergency situation.

Fortunately, there are many steps you can take to ensuring that your staff is properly trained and educated about food allergies, so your guests can feel safe eating at your restaurant and your staff will feel comfortable knowing how to safely handle restaurant equipment to prepare allergy-sensitive food. The list of food allergy preparedness to-dos include:

A restaurant’s kitchen can be a hazardous place. It’s a fast-paced environment with all manner of dangerous areas and precision commercial restaurant equipment. Unfortunately, the best commercial restaurant equipment is also the equipment that is kept the sharpest or is able to heat the highest, so you and your kitchen staff need to exercise caution day in and day out in the back of house. Here are some guidelines to evaluate the level of safety and cleanliness in your kitchen so you can be productive and cautious at the same time.

Have a Cleaning and Safety Checklist

Sanitation and safety should the top priorities in the kitchen. Preventing food-borne illnesses and problems that stem from food allergies are major concerns for restaurants, and nipping those problems in the bud with a strict cleanliness policy is a must. Likewise, it is critical that you ensure that the kitchen is a safe environment. Creating a checklist for the end of the day can encourage good habits. A proper safety and cleaning checklist should include items like …

Food Safety Matters

Food Safety … It isn’t something most people think about on a daily basis, except for the restaurant industry that is. We think about it everyday because the last thing any of us want is for someone to get sick from the food that we work hard to prepare. We also don’t want to think about our restaurant being shut down because we didn’t meet food safety standards.

Food Safety Guidelines

With the right equipment and the right knowledge, food safety is a pretty easy thing to handle.

Some great guidelines to remember are:

- All restaurant employee employees should follow hygiene guidelines; such as washing hands after using the restroom and before preparing food.

- Cross-contamination of foods should be avoided at all times. Wash, rinse and sanitize all food contact surfaces, such as work tables, slicers, and other preparation equipment.

- Hot foods should be held hot at temperatures of 140 degrees Fahrenheit or greater. Holding cabinets provide a constant source of proper heat.

- Cold foods should be kept cold at temperatures of 41 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. Keep a thermometer in your refrigerator to make sure the temperature is at the proper setting.

- Abusing standard time and temperature standards for food should be avoided at all costs when handling prepared foods.

- Leftovers should only be reheated in the oven once; after that they should be tossed out.

Food Safety Means Better Health

As stated earlier in the post, food safety matters to everyone … restaurateur, chef, employees, and patrons can all be harmed by foodborne pathogens. There are more than 250 known foodborne diseases that cause anywhere from minor illness to death. By following the simple guidelines listed above and by making sure all of your equipment is functioning properly, you can help prevent disease and illness caused by unhealthy foods.

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